


the thing you dream about (before your hunger wakes you up)

by rudderless in an ocean of stars (ellieindelibly)



Category: Batwoman (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gen, alice/beth deserves the world and i’m gonna give it to her, and so will kate, but the cw scares me, it’s early to be writing a fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 23:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21382339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellieindelibly/pseuds/rudderless%20in%20an%20ocean%20of%20stars
Summary: “in the end, it comes down to this:the kane twins standing in the dark of a moonless night, on the rooftop that alice had chosen in order to have the best vantage point from which watch utter chaos unfold in the streets of gotham.there is a detonator in alice’s hand. one press of the shiny red button in the center and the city will crumble into madness. no one will be safe from the rabbit hole that alice has spent fifteen years digging deeper and deeper and deeper. in the morning, the sun will rise above a city full of people trapped in the darkness with her. everything is going according to plan, except for the fact that is it kate who finds her there.”//the one in which dreams come true
Relationships: Beth Kane & Kate Kane
Comments: 5
Kudos: 85





	the thing you dream about (before your hunger wakes you up)

in the end, it comes down to this:

the kane twins standing in the dark of a moonless night, on the rooftop that alice had chosen in order to have the best vantage point from which watch utter chaos unfold in the streets of gotham.

there is a detonator in alice’s hand. one press of the shiny red button in the center and the city will crumble into madness. no one will be safe from the rabbit hole that alice has spent fifteen years digging deeper and deeper and _deeper_. in the morning, the sun will rise above a city full of people trapped in the darkness with her. everything is going according to plan, except for the fact that is it kate who finds her there.

_kate_, not batwoman.

as always, she’s dressed in black from head to toe, but she’s not wearing the suit or the cape or the cowl and it makes alice feel more off-balance than it should. the only glint of color in kate’s monochromatic ensemble comes from the thin silver chain snaking around her bare neck and the blood-red garnet nestled against the hollow of her throat.

alice thinks she’s never seen her sister look more vulnerable- or more dangerous- than she does in this moment.

“not in the mood for playing dress-up tonight?” she quips, letting her lips curl into a practiced smirk as she tilts her head to the side and freely laces her tone with venom. “and here i thought you liked being a bat.”

kate doesn’t even blink. what she does do, however, is take several quick steps forward until alice raises the controller in her hand to stop her in her tracks. she’s close enough now for alice to make out the tension kate is carrying in every part of her body. even in the low light, it’s not difficult to see every hard line and polished edge of the weapon that her sister has trained herself to be.

alice is a weapon too, wickedly sharp and deliciously vicious, except none of her lines and edges are shiny and smooth. unlike her twin, alice never had much of a choice when it came to being made into who she is now. what she is now. kate is an expertly forged tactical knife, perfectly balanced and tempered. alice is a crude shard of broken glass wrapped in scraps of cloth, a makeshift blade for a patchwork girl built out of mismatched pieces. she’s spent over a decade honing herself to a killing edge on the walls of her cage.

“i’m not here to fight you, beth,” kate says, and alice idly wonders what it will take to make kate stop looking at her like the ghost of a girl long since dead and buried.

“how many times do we have to go over this, kate?” alice sing-songs, rolling her eyes with exaggerated effect. “beth. is. _gone_.”

kate shrugs, a loose, rolling movement that provides jarring contrast to the way her mouth settles into a stern line for a moment before she speaks again. “then you’re gonna have to pick a new name, ‘cause i’m sure as hell not calling you alice.”

and _that_, that makes alice throw her head back and _laugh_. the sound cuts through the quiet night air and fills the space between them with a bitterness so harsh that kate actually flinches back from its bite.

“what makes you think i ever had a choice in the first place?” alice spits back, practically hissing through her teeth, bared in a feral approximation of her usual saccharine smile. “you were the one with all the choices, dear sister, and i was the one who grew up locked in a room without a key.”

kate shakes her head, and the sudden motion makes the unshed tears starting to pool in her eyes all the more evident. “i know i failed you then, but you aren’t there anymore. you don’t have to be what they made you.”

alice scoffs, lips curling up in a snarl. “that’s rich, coming from you. all you want me to be is _beth_, no matter how much i try to tell you that she’s _dead_! she got trapped in a basement and shoved down a rabbit hole and she’s _never_ coming out!”

“then screw beth!” kate screams back, and it’s enough to make every bone in alice’s body turn to stone. “i just want my sister, whoever that is now, whatever you are now!”

“and what if that person is a monster? what if that person wants nothing more than to press this button and watch ten million minds burn?”

“then you’ll have to kill me first.” kate reaches into her pocket and pulls out a blade with a familiar, gleaming gem set into its hilt. she tosses the open knife through the air and alice catches it by the handle with her empty hand effortlessly, instinctively. “whether you use that knife or press that button, either way i’m not making out of here, right? so at least do it personally.”

then kate closes the distance between them before alice can so much as blink, stepping closer and closer until the tip of the blade is just a hair’s breadth away from her body. alice stands frozen, with the controller in one hand and her knife in the other. she watches in stunned silence as kate shrugs off her thick leather jacket to reveal a thin cotton t-shirt whose loose scoop neck she pulls down even lower before starting to move forward again. she doesn’t stop until the point of the knife begins to dig into the exposed skin right above her heart.

“what are you doing?” alice is whispering now, because that’s all she can manage in her current state of shock and disbelief and _horror_.

“you said you saved my life before because it wouldn’t be fun to torture a corpse, right? so go ahead. do it. kill me now and make it hurt. i won’t stop you.” she leans in just a little bit closer. alice’s gaze flickers down to the bright red blood that starts to bead around the tip of her favorite blade. kate’s blood. her sister’s blood. “i won’t fight back.”

be- _alice_ can’t breathe.

ice settles into her veins, freezing her blood into sharp little splinters of pain as the implications of the situation fully begin sink into her skin. distantly, she realizes that her hands have started to shake, and her thumb has slipped away from the trigger. a hummingbird’s heart comes to life inside her chest, the individual beats thrumming so fast that they coalesce together into a single sound that, for a moment, is all she can hear.

“who do you want to be?” kate says, so softly that the words would have been lost if they weren’t standing so close to one another. the clatter of the knife hitting the ground with a clatter snaps her firmly back into her body. her trembling fingers find the switch on the side of the device; the controller powers down, its crimson light blinking off in an instant.

“i don’t know,” she replies quietly; she doesn’t think she’s sounded quite so small and lost and _alone_ since the day she had to stifle her cries in the basement as she listened to kate’s footsteps going up the stairs. “no one ever asked.”

“i’m asking now.” her sister smiles, so bright and happy and _hopeful_ that it hurts, but it is the sweetest pain she has ever known. “and we can find out together, okay?”

“okay,” she murmurs back, and kate takes her by the hand to lead her out of the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m terrified that the cw is going to give the kane twins a tragic ending and i wanted to preemptively write a fix-it fic to heal my heart just in case, even though i hope that doesn’t happen and i’m willing to sell my soul to guarantee it.
> 
> also, i googled the population of gotham and i can’t believe ten million people actually live there and still choose to live there, after everything that’s gone down in that city. like, that’s ten million people with a death wish right there.
> 
> leave a review, hug alice/beth kane.
> 
> edit: so i guess i was right about that tragic ending huh. 
> 
> yell at me on tumblr: @rudderless-in-an-ocean-of-stars :)
> 
> check out my batwoman edits on ig: @lavender.beth


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